ON STONE FOLK-LORE. 205 



neuter. Credulity dies hard. Doubts touching the alleged 

 virtue of the eagle-stone did not begin to arise till the middle 

 of the eighteenth century, and it was not till the beginning 

 of the nineteenth that all its imaginary and semi-miraculous 

 qualities fell into disrepute. 



2. The Adder-Stone is of ancient as well as comparatively 

 modern repute. Pliny refers to its occurrence in Gaul as an 

 egg (ovum anguinum) of many virtues. The supposed mode 

 of its formation differed in different countries, but in each it 

 was associated with the adder. It was long held that at the 

 season when adders slough, many meet in one place, rarely 

 seen by man, when the largest casts its skin in the form of a 

 jjerfect tube, through which the others quickly wriggle, each 

 one leaving a coating of slime in it. This, in drying, assumes 

 a globular shape with a hole in the centre, and thus was 

 formed the druidical bead of the old antiquaries ; the adder 

 stone of the vulgar ; the Roman glass bead of others. It was 

 wont to be worn as a charm against evil spirits, as an amulet 

 against, or for the cure of, whooping cough, as a remedy for 

 inflammation of the eyes, and as an effective help in the 

 cutting of the child's first set of teeth I The prevalence of 

 such notions so recently as the close of last century seems to 

 show that the believers in the adder stone's virtues were 

 ignorant of the process of bead making, so far at least as 

 concerned the production of the twisting ornament by the 

 mode in which the colours are laid on. 



3. The Snake -Stone has a place in literature which 

 will never allow the popular belief to be forgotten. The 

 reference to it in Scott's Marmion makes this good : — 



" Whitby's nuns exulting told 

 How of thousand snakes each one 

 Was changed into a coil of stone 

 When holy Hilda prayed. 

 Themselves within their holy ground 

 These stony folds had often found." 



The range of the snake-stone belief is very wide, and is 

 determined by the distribution of the rocks in which the 

 so-called fossilized snakes occur. They are not limited to 

 the Ammonites of the AVhitby Lias, but are met with in each 

 of the great divisions of the Mesozoic period, fiom the 

 Trias to the Chalk. But there are also Palaeozoic forms 

 which have given rise to corresponding fancies, and to 

 which medicinal virtues, j)rotective or curative, have been 

 ascribed — for example Bellerophoru Uuomphohts, Litmtes, 



